mindfulness

Three Things to Start Each Day

10/28/2017 by John Leave a Comment

A breath. Not just any breath, the kind we take a thousand times each day, without noticing we are even doing it, without experiencing it. Take a breath and feel each part, the beginning identified, its middle passed through, and conclusion noted. To experience a breath like this is to know that you are alive.
Gratitude. Think about one thing you are grateful for: the soft bed you are resting in, the food on your table, the love you feel from friends and family, the ability to notice that one breath you just took. Gratitude leads to giving, and giving leads to happiness.
Intention. Ask yourself, how do you want to live today? What light will guide you through this journey? What do you hope to accomplish with the time you are allotted? Intention leads to purpose. Intention sets the course.

Adopted from the ideas of sports psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais, first heard on The Rich Roll Podcast and a journal entry from 1.3.15

Breathe

10/13/2017 by John Leave a Comment

I pause for a moment and take a breath, bringing into my body the air that sustained the lives of countless other beings before me. I exhale knowing that this same air will nourish the lives of others. Perhaps it will become the leaves of a tree, or be a newborn baby’s first breath. The things that connect us are everywhere, yet we pay more attention to the things that divide us, the separations we spend too much time identifying with and complaining about. We are all made of the same stuff: air, carbon, and water endlessly recycled since before time.

I take another breath and hope that someday we will live the truth that we are far more alike than we are different.

Based on a journal entry from 9.10.13

Snapshots From Hurricane Irma

09/22/2017 by John Leave a Comment

After The Storm

After the storm, the mud lay thick on the floor, oozing its way into every crevice of the house.

After the storm, the building where Mary and I first kissed lay scattered in pieces throughout the mangroves.

After the storm, there were plenty of good things to talk about, so why does the news only report about the bad?

Watching Over The Island

The debris fan spread out from the West Cottage like an airplane crash, objects smashed and scattered into a million tiny pieces. Strangely, there is no mud here. On the island, it must have all been water, wave after wave washing over it, battering all in its path. I sift through the pile and run across a familiar face, the picture pristine amongst the carnage. Tucker never did much like storms, but he seems to have sat through this one just fine.

The Stories We Write

There is a pile of mud soaked things growing higher in the front yard. My well-curated collection of sea kayaking books and a good sized portion of my Outward Bound instructor resources are a sodden mess somewhere near the bottom. I’ve held onto these things for years, but I couldn’t tell you when was the last time I opened up one of those sea kayaking books or used any of my resources on course.

In the end, the pile in the yard is just a collection of objects, their only value is in the memories I have attached to them, and as I grow older, even those fall by the wayside, more stuff added to the discard pile. Life is not defined by the objects, or the memories that we cling to. It is written in disappearing ink about what we are doing right here, right now.